All the stars would have been amazed to all play in this new beautiful arena.

amen. barclays in a few months will be the hippest and most cutting edge arena in the entire americas. and that doesn't mean you have to worship it or get intimidated by it, but simply taking advantage of it through an all-star game should be a no-brainer.

since that's not happening, the main reason why not is certainly about money. not necessarily money paid upfront, which would probably make prokhy look very suspicious, but money spent in many different ways keeping a select group of cities in the inner circle.

so look at it this way-- the all-star game is a completely shit-bogus affair which means absolutely nothing to any aspect of basketball that actually matters. the games themselves (rookie and AS) are complete frauds in which the main concern is to avoid defending and to look flashy while scoring some ESPN-worthy points. any smart upper-level player who wants to go deep in the playoffs is honored to be selected, but prefers to find a way to skip all the nonsense in order to rest their bodies.

tl:dr: the all-star game is complete nonsense on almost every level. there is really no better way that i know to say it.